embedded narratives in st. louis' built environment

Films

Local television station KTVI produced The City Fights Back (1960) to promote the Mill Creek Valley urban renewal project. Bill Leonard wrote, produced and directed the film, which was hosted by Bruce Hayward. The City Fights Back extolls the clearance through promotion of the idea that rebuilding the neighborhood would break St. Louis’ economic and physical decline. In the film, Mayor Raymond Tucker states that “we must continue, or we will slide back to where we were,” summarizing the ideological conviction that aligned across federal and local political authorities at the time. Interviews with Tucker and Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority Director Charles Farris offer definitive statements of the conviction that slum clearance activity would promulgate growth and vitality in the city. Farris claims that the city’s renewal projects would conclude by 1975. Instead, St. Louis is still chasing the renewal-by-clearance myth today.